"A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his
feet."--_The Wise Man_.
Both Ignorance and Little-Faith would have had their revenge and
satisfaction upon Christian and Hopeful had they seen those two so
Pharisaical old men taken in the Flatterer's net. For it was nothing
else but the swaggering pride of Hopeful over the pitiful case of Little-
Faith, taken along with the hard and hasty ways of Christian with that
unhappy youth Ignorance, that so soon laid them both down under the small
cords of the Shining One. This word of the wise man, that pride goeth
before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall, was fulfilled to
the very letter in Christian and Hopeful that high-minded day. At the
same time, it must be admitted that Christian and Hopeful would have been
more than human if they had not both felt and let fall some superiority,
some scorn, and some impatience in the presence of such a silly and
upsetting stripling as Ignorance was; as, also, over the story of such a
poor-spirited and spunging creature as Little-Faith was. Christian and
Hopeful had just come down from their delightful time among the
Delectable Mountains, and they were as full as they could hold of all
kinds of knowledge, and faith, and hope, and assurance; when, most
unfortunately, as it turned out, they first came across Ignorance, and
then, after quarrelling with him, they fell out between themselves over
the case of Little-Faith. Their superior knowledge of the truth, and
their superior strength of faith, ought to have made them more able to
bear with the infirmities of the weak, and with the passing moods,
however provoking, of one another. But no. And their impatience and
contempt and bad temper all came at this crisis to such a head with them
that they could only be cured by the small cords and the stinging words
of the Shining One. The true key to this so painful part of the parable
hangs at our own girdle. We who have been born and brought up in an
evangelical church are thrown from time to time into the company of
men--ministers and people--who have not had our advantages and
opportunities. They have been born, baptized, and brought up in
communities and churches the clean opposite of ours; and they are as
ignorant of all New Testament religion as Ignorance himself was; or, on
the other hand, they are as full of superstition and terror and spiritual
starvation as Little-Faith was. And then, instead of recollecting and
laying to heart Who made us to differ from such ignorance and such
unbelief, and thus putting on love and humility and patience toward our
neighbours, we speak scornfully and roughly to them, and boast ourselves
over them, and as good as say to them, Stand by thyself, come not near to
me, for I am wiser, wider-minded, stronger, and better every way than
thou. And then, ere ever we are aware of what we are doing, we have let
the arch-flatterer of religious superiority and of spiritual pride seduce
us aside out of the lowly and heavenly way of love and humility till we
are again brought back to it with rebukes of conscience and with other
chastisements. You all understand, my brethren, that the man black of
flesh but covered with a white robe was no wayside seducer who met
Christian and Hopeful at that dangerous part of the road only and only on
that high-minded day. You know from yourselves surely that both
Christian and Hopeful carried that black but smooth-spoken man within
themselves. The Flatterer who led the two pilgrims so fatally wrong that
day was just their own heart taken out of their own bosom and personified
and dramatised by Bunyan's dramatic genius, and so made to walk and talk
and flatter and puff up outside of themselves till they came again to see
who in reality he was and whence he came,--that is to say, till they were
brought to see what they themselves still were, and would always be, when
they were left to themselves. "Where did you lie last night? asked the
Shining One with the whip. With the Shepherds on the Delectable
Mountains, they answered. He asked them then if they had not of those
shepherds a note of direction for the way? They answered, Yes. But did
you not, said he, when you were at a stand pluck out and read your note?
They answered, No. He asked them why? They said they forgot. He asked,
moreover if the shepherds did not bid them beware of the Flatterer? They
answered, Yes; but we did not imagine, said they, that this fine-spoken
man had been he."
All good literature, both sacred and profane, both ancient and modern, is
full of the Flatterer. Let me not, protests Elihu in his powerful speech
in the book of Job, let me not accept any man's person; neither let me
give flattering titles unto man, lest in so doing my Maker should soon
take me away. And the Psalmist in his powerful description of the wicked
men of his day: There is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward
part is very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter
with their tongue. And again: They speak with flattering lips, and with
a double heart do they speak. But the Lord shall cut off all flattering
lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things. "The perpetual
hyperbole" of pure love becomes in the lips of impure love the impure
bait that leads the simple ones astray on the streets of the city as seen
and heard by the wise man out of his casement. My son, say unto wisdom,
Thou art my sister, and call understanding thy kinswoman; that they may
keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger which flattereth thee
with her words, which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth
the covenant of her God. And then in the same book of Hebrew aphorisms
we find this text which Bunyan puts on the margin of the page: "A man
that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet." And now,
before we leave the ancient world, if you would not think it beneath the
dignity of the place we are in, I would like to read to you a passage out
of a round-about paper written by a satirist of Greece about the time of
Ezra and Nehemiah in Jerusalem. You will easily remark the difference of
tone between the seriousness and pathos of the Hebrew prophet and the
light and chaffing touch of Theophrastus. "The Flatterer is a person,"
says that satirist of Greek society, "who will say to you as he walks
with you, 'Do you observe how people are looking at you? This happens to
no man in Athens but to you. A fine compliment was paid you yesterday in
the Porch. More than thirty persons were sitting there when the question
was started, Who is our foremost man? Every one mentioned you first, and
ended by coming back to your name.' The Flatterer will laugh also at
your stalest joke, and will stuff his cloak into his mouth as if he could
not repress his amusement when you again tell it. He will buy apples and
pears and will give to your children when you are by, and will kiss them
all and will say, 'Chicks of a good father.' Also, when he assists at
the purchase of slippers he will declare that the foot is more shapely
than the shoe. He is the first of the guests to praise the wine and to
say as he reclines next the host, 'How delicate your fare always is'; and
taking up something from the table, 'Now, how excellent that is!'" And
so on. Yes, we have heard it all over and over again in Modern Athens
also. The Greek fable also of the fox and the crow and the piece of
cheese is only another illustration of the truth that the God of truth
and integrity never left Himself without a witness. Our own literature
also is scattered full of the Flatterer and his too willing dupes. "Of
praise a mere glutton," says Goldsmith of David Garrick, "he swallowed
what came. The puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame." "Delicious
essence," exclaims Sterne, "how refreshing thou art to poor human nature!
How sweetly dost thou mix with the blood, and help it through the most
difficult and tortuous passages to the heart." "He that slanders me,"
says Cowper, "paints me blacker than I am, and he that flatters me
whiter. They both daub me, and when I look in the glass of conscience, I
see myself disguised by both." And then he sings:
"The worth of these three kingdoms I defy
To lure me to the baseness of a lie;
And of all lies (be that one poet's boast),
The lie that flatters I abhor the most."
Now, praise, which is one of the best and sweetest things in human life,
so soon passes over into flattery, which is one of the worst things, that
something must here be said and laid to heart about praise also. But, to
begin with, praise itself must first be praised. There is nothing nobler
than true praise in him who speaks it, and there is nothing dearer and
sweeter to him who hears it. God Himself inhabits the praises of Israel.
All God's works praise Him. Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me. Praise
waiteth for Thee, O God, in Zion. Enter into His gates with
thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Violence shall no more be
heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou
shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise. And such also is
all true praise between man and man. How deliciously sweet is praise!
How we labour after it! how we look for it and wait for it! and how we
languish and die if we do not get it! Again, when it comes to us, how it
cheers us up and makes our face to shine! For a long time after it our
step is so swift on the street and our face beams so that all men can
quite well see what has come to us. Praise is like wine in our blood; it
is new life to our fainting heart. So much is this the case that a
salutation of praise is to be our first taste of heaven itself. It will
wipe all tears off our eyes when we hear our Lord saying to us, "Well
done!" when all our good works that we have done in the body shall be
found unto praise and honour and glory in the great day of Jesus Christ.
At the same time, this same love of praise is one of our most besetting
and fatal temptations as long as we are in this false and double and
deceptive world. Sin, God curse it! has corrupted and poisoned
everything, the very best things of this life, and when the best things
are corrupted and poisoned they become the worst things. And praise does
not escape this universal and fatal law. Weak, evil, and self-seeking
men are near us, and we lean upon them, look to them, and listen to them.
We make them our strength and support, and seek repose and refreshment
from them. They cannot be all or any of these things to us; but we are
far on in life, we are done with life, before we have discovered that and
will admit that. Most men never discover and admit that till they are
out of this life altogether. Christ's praise and the applause of His
saints and angels are so future and so far away from us, and man's praise
and the applause of this world, hollow and false as it is, is so near us,
that we feed our souls on offal and garbage, when, already, in the
witness of a good conscience, we might be feasting our souls on the
finest of the wheat, and satisfying them with honey out of the rock. And,
then, this insatiable appetite of our hearts, being so degraded and
perverted, like all degraded and perverted appetites, becomes an iron-
fast slave to what it feeds upon. What miserable slaves we all are to
the approval and the praise of men! How they hold us in their bondage!
How we lick their hands and sit up on our haunches and go through our
postures for a crumb! How we crawl on our belly and lick their feet for
a stroke and a smile! What a hound's life does that man lead who lives
upon the approval and the praise and the patronage of men! What meanness
fills his mind; what baseness fills his heart! What a shameful leash he
is led about the world in! How kicked about and spat upon he is; while
not half so much as he knows all the time that he deserves to be! Better
far be a dog at once and bay the moon than be a man and fawn upon the
praises of men.
If you would be a man at all, not to speak of a Christian man, starve
this appetite till you have quite extirpated it. You will never be safe
from it as long as it stirs within you. Extirpate it! Extirpate it! You
will never know true self-respect and you will never deserve to know it,
till you have wholly extirpated your appetite for praise. Put your foot
upon it, put it out of your heart. Stop fishing for it, and when you see
it coming, turn away and stop your ears against it. And should it still
insinuate itself, at any rate do not repeat to others what has already so
flattered and humbled and weakened you. Telling it to others will only
humble and weaken you more. By repeating the praise that you have heard
or read about yourself you only expose yourself and purchase
well-deserved contempt for yourself. And, more than that, by fishing for
praise you lay yourself open to all sorts of flatterers. Honest men, men
who truly respect and admire you, will show you their dignified regard
and appreciation of you and your work by their silence; while your leaky
slaves will crowd around you with floods of praise that they know well
will please and purchase you. And when you cannot with all your arts
squeeze a drop out of those who love and honour you, gallons will be
poured upon you by those who have respect neither for themselves nor for
you. Faugh! Flee from flatterers, and take up only with sternly true
and faithful men. "I am much less regardful," says Richard Baxter, "of
the approbation of men, and set much lighter store by their praise and
their blame, than I once did. All worldly things appear most vain and
unsatisfying to those who have tried them most. But while I feel that
this has had some hand in my distaste for man's praise, yet it is the
increasing impression on my heart of man's nothingness and God's
transcendent greatness; it is the brevity and vanity of all earthly
things, taken along with the nearness of eternity;--it is all this that
has at last lifted me above the blame and the praise of men."
To conclude; let us make up our mind and determine to pass on to God on
the spot every syllable of praise that ever comes to our eyes or our
ears--if, in this cold, selfish, envious, and grudging world, any
syllable of praise ever should come to us. Even if pure and generous and
well-deserved praise should at any time come to us, all that does not
make it ours. The best earned usury is not the steward's own money to do
with it what he likes. The principal and the interest, and the trader
too, are all his master's. And, more than that, after the wisest and the
best trader has done his best, he will remain, to himself at least, a
most unprofitable servant. Pass on then immediately, dutifully, and to
its very last syllable, to God all the praise that comes to you. Wash
your hands of it and say, Not unto us, O God, not unto us, but unto Thy
name. And then, to take the most selfish and hungry-hearted view of this
whole matter, what you thus pass on to God as not your own but His, He
will soon, and in a better and safer world, return again to the full with
usury to you, and you again to God, and He again to you, and so on, all
down the pure and true and sweet and blessed life of heaven.